So, I’m using Fiske guide to college to help me with building my college list. For each school the book reviews, there is a section that lists around 8 of the school’s strongest programs. My question is: should I even bother applying to schools that aren’t strong in my major? For an example, for schools like U Penn, U of Chig, and Urbana Champaign, they aren’t listed as “strong” in biology, which is what I’m really interested in majoring in. I was thinking that the biology program at U penn, although not it’s best, might be stronger than, say, a biology program at UC Irvine, which is it’s best.
Strongest in this case would be relative within a particular school, but not across schools. Therefore, an “average” program at one school might nonetheless be stronger than a “strongest” program at another.
Right. For instance, USNews has both the U of C and UPenn as among the top 20 bio programs in the country:
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/biological-sciences-rankings
UCI is not there.
Lots of these schools are strong across the board. I like Fiske, but don’t treat that part as gospel.
Right; UIUC is very strong in all STEM fields (and pretty darn strong across the board). They don’t have any majors I consider weak.
I really think any of those top schools will programs in biology that will be more than sufficient for an undergraduate student. IMO when you get to the graduate level then you need to look at the particular strength a school has in your discipline.
If a school had stronger strength in bio, wouldn’t that mean more research and job opportunities?
It may mean more research output relative to other subjects, but not necessarily overall and not necessarily wrt undergraduate access.
For instance, if a university has five programs ranked top 10 in the US, plus a few ranked top 20, and another university has no top 10 programs and five top 20, then university 1 wouldn’t have its top 20 programs listed in Fiske whereas University 2 would.
You can safely assume that any university ranked top 25 is going to be strong across the board.
Second issue: the fact professors do a lot of research doesn’t mean you as an undergraduate will.
What impacts undergraduate access to research opportunities may be 1) presence of graduate students (LACs may have more opportunities for you) or 2) enrollment in the Honors college (in that it ‘signals’ to professors that although you’re just an undergrad you’re worth the time they’ll devote training you.)
Not the best part of Fiske.